John Casey - Compass Rose

May had been thinking of Deirdre as Charlie’s shipmate and rescuer. She was taken aback when Deirdre bent over Charlie, whispered in his ear, and then kissed him on the mouth.

Tom cranked the motorcycle, Deirdre got on, and they were gone. Then Dick got in his pickup. He’d come up alone, let him go back alone.

May and Phoebe settled Charlie in the front seat. As they walked around the front of the car Phoebe said to May, “So it looks as if everything’s going to be fine.” May shook her head. No sense in tempting fate like that. She was also trying not to think of how mad she was at Dick. Maybe mad wasn’t the right word— broken was more like it. Something was broken.

Phoebe said, “I’m just sorry you and Dick couldn’t go to Miss Perry’s funeral. And of course you’re exhausted. Was that room they got you all right? They should have done that the first night. I mean, they could see we were just curled up on those awful chairs.” May looked through the windshield at Charlie, who’d tipped his seat back and closed his eyes. Phoebe said, “Yes, we should get going.” She got as far as the driver’s door and said, “I’ve got tons to tell you. When I went to my friend’s house, I drove Deirdre to her friend’s house, so we talked, or I should say she talked. But I guess that’ll have to wait. Let’s just say I don’t think we’ve seen the last of her. You’ll be okay in the backseat? I’ll scoot my seat up some.”

May didn’t want to talk or think; she didn’t want any part of her to come loose. As she and Phoebe each took hold of their door handles, Phoebe said, “It’s funny — she reminds me of someone.”

May said, “Charlie’s just falling asleep,” but Phoebe had already jarred the idea loose: Deirdre looked a lot like Elsie. Maybe a dozen years younger but the same animal alertness, the compactness, the tomboy edge. The way Deirdre was ready to ride a motorcycle. But fair’s fair, also ready to dive into the sea and pull Charlie out.

May got in. Charlie’s seat was tipped back so far she could put her hand on his forehead. Charlie said, “I’m f-fine, Ma, I’m going to be fi-fine. Damn!”

“Don’t worry. The doctor said that’ll clear up.”

Charlie touched his nose with his right forefinger, then with his left. “There. Could be worse. But what am I going to call you, Ph-Ph-Phoebe?”

Phoebe laughed the way she did around men. “Oh, we’ll think of something.” Phoebe touched Charlie’s arm. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing because … It was hearing my own name.”

“It’s okay.”

“You know, a little bit of a stammer has a certain charm. You’ll have to watch yourself.”

May willed Phoebe’s hand off Charlie’s arm.

Executrix . Jack enjoyed saying it as often as possible. “The first thing you should do as executrix is to go identify the assets. Real property, personal property, choses in action—”

“I know.”

“Johnny won’t be able to help this time around, since the state may have an interest.”

“I know.”

“But he could be helpful in informal ways. You may want more leave from Natural Resources, since your duties as executrix—”

“Jack, I know what to do.”

But when Elsie stepped into Miss Perry’s house she was surprisingly undone. Not by grief — she knew her grief — but by the house itself, which she suddenly didn’t know. It was as if the house and everything in it were springing to life. She saw the door, the rack with Miss Perry’s father’s canes, the staircase, the bull’s-eye window in the library — as if she’d once heard of them and was only now seeing them. At first she shrank back as if all these things radiated an energy that was opposed to her. Then she began to touch things: the desk, the mantelpiece, the corner of the glass-front bookcase. She said, “I am the executrix.” It could be her word — to hell with Jack — a magic word. She didn’t say it to diminish the house but to receive it. She’d meant to sit down at the desk, but the air was too charged for that, the light too heavy. She filled a pail of water, added a cup of vinegar, and cleaned the tall windows to the west. She used the bookshelf ladder to reach the bull’s-eye window. She found a jar of leather preservative in a pigeonhole in the desk. The label read “Everett Hazard Book Shop.” She dipped her fingers in it and anointed the leather bindings of all eight volumes of Gibbon’s Roman Empire . And then the whole shelf of leather-bound histories. Parkman, Prescott, Mottley. This was the sort of executrix she would be, letting in light and applying balm. A curator. Or rather curatrix.

She would have charge of this house until the Perryville School took over. The library was to remain a library, the second and third floors to be a dormitory for the senior girls. And surely a faculty member to supervise them. The headmaster had spoken to her about the possibility.

She applied the last of the jar to Henry Adams’s complete works. She smelled her hands — where could she find another jar? — and wondered what she could teach, how anyone could teach anything, since everything depended on everything else.

Rose screeched. She screeched with her mouth closed so it was half screech, half whinny. She took a breath and said, “It’s not enough that I have to go to this … this finishing school. What do you think that’ll be like with you—”

“It’s not a finishing school. It’s a perfectly good progressive school. I don’t know where you got the idea that—”

“Whatever. Just when a few people have stopped thinking I’m a total loser, you’re butting in and the whole thing’ll start all over again.”

“I won’t be teaching you . And I’ll be part-time administration, mostly at Miss Perry’s house.”

“Why can’t you just go on guarding the Great Swamp?”

“Because they’ve replaced me with someone.” This was half true. “I can stay on, but it would be at a desk job in Providence.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want to.”

“So get your old boyfriend to fix it.”

“How I decide to earn money is up to me. Besides—”

“And that makes my life up to you, too.”

“Besides, he’s done enough. And besides, you don’t go around fixing things that way.”

Rose cocked her head. “You’re saying he’s done enough and you don’t go around fixing things that way? I hope you’re not going to teach logic.”

Elsie stared at her. Rose said, “What’s the use?” and went into her room and closed the door.

Beside Rose’s door there was a thermostat that controlled the heat in her bedroom. Elsie turned it down to fifty. She put another log in the woodstove. With the door closed Rose would be freezing in twenty minutes. After five minutes Elsie turned it back up. Part of what made her so mad at Rose was her own uncertainty — was she leaping boldly or curling up?

Elsie rode her Exercycle. Rose called through the door, “Mom! I’m trying to study!”

Elsie started to carry the Exercycle up the inside stairs to Mary Scanlon’s empty room. It wouldn’t fit. She used the outdoor stairs — the separate entrance that they’d thought discreet but that Mary, as far as Elsie knew, never used.

Elsie had been puzzled and hurt. She missed Mary and knew she’d go on missing her, but she recognized what Mary was talking about when Mary said she wanted to get out of the Rose-Elsie crossfire.

As Elsie pedaled it occurred to her that Rose could be a boarder at school. If Elsie worked full-time she’d get a free pass on tuition — maybe room and board were covered, too. What was she thinking? That Mary would come back then? That Rose would miss her and be nice? Or did she want her house to herself? For peace and quiet? That would be nice for a change. And of course she could come and go as she pleased. She hadn’t had a sexual fantasy since she’d gone on leave to care for Miss Perry. Maybe she’d forgotten how. She’d certainly been hollowed, her senses had become simpler, her attention lifted out of herself. Some days she’d felt as young as Li Tran, or as if she were once again Miss Perry’s pet student. Other days she’d felt ageless, gliding up and down the stairs, the swing of her skirt barely stirring the still air. How long had it gone on? A month? Forty days? She’d liked the feeling of her body being hollowed — she hadn’t exercised, she’d eaten little. Now she was re-finding her body, and it was diminished, not up to hard exercise. Not even responding to fantasy. Had something else happened? Could it be that what she’d thought was a time of ascetic selflessness (for which Captain Teixeira had so sweetly praised her) was also when the first tendril of menopause was taking hold? Were her breasts smaller? Was there a bloom of down on her upper lip? Was that why she was snappish with Rose? And now unable even to conjure an imaginary lover?